Sunday, February 22: Warcraft III Strategies and Tips

Washington's Birthday

Dave Roos

Bill Roper and the folks from Blizzard Entertainment
(http://www.blizzard.com)
were nice enough to slip us some insider info on how to master their real-time
strategy epic Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. All of these tips (and many more)
can be found at Battle.net as part of Marn Thunderhorn's Warcraft III
Strategy Guide.

Warcraft III is a game of learning. When you lose, you should know why.
By knowing why you lost, you can find areas to improve upon on in future
games. Watch game replays to figure out where you went wrong, and look at
areas in which you can improve. If you are stumped, give replays to your
friends and ask them for advice.

A hero's skill point should be spent as soon as you get it. Watch
the portrait in the top-left corner for the hero's skill points. Don't
let them add up. Don't leave them unspent for very long. While in rare
situations you might want to save skill points, usually you want to spend
them as soon as you get them.

Just because your town is gone doesn't mean the game is over. In previous
games, a player was eliminated when all of his buildings were destroyed, but
in Warcraft III, a team will live on until all buildings from all the team
members are destroyed. This means all players should stay in the game until
everyone is eliminated.

Share unit control and fight until the end. Also, you can still get a
win if you and your ally are able to beat the enemy. If you manage to win,
you both get a win even if all of your (but not your allies') buildings
and units were destroyed.

Always make sure the worker or hero has a way of getting out when you build
a building. If you're not careful, you can end up walling in your worker
or hero with buildings or trees. If this happens, you either have to destroy
a building, kill the worker, or purchase a Goblin Zeppelin to get them out.
You can also kill the unit to free up food.

If you have to leave a game and your allies continue playing, open the
allies' menu and give all your resources to your ally. Allies will
be able to control your buildings and units after you leave the game. This
may help them win the game.

Icy Tower
(http://www.freelunchdesign.com)
is a fast and free game from Free Lunch Design. You're Harold the Homeboy,
and you've found a tower made of ice that you would like to climb. Use the
arrow keys to run. Use the spacebar to jump.

The basic version of Icy Tower is small and contains itty-bitty sound files.
To listen to the music, download the 2.8MB .dat file or the 6.9MB .dat file and
drag it to the C:\games\ icytower\data folder.